No matter how tired I was on the previous day, or if there was a request to be done that day, I always got up at 5 am and started my training. Even if today was the day I was meeting Lloyd for lunch, my routine didn’t change.
While carrying the weight of approximately three men, I ran two laps around the city walls, which totaled around 50 kilometers, within two hours. After returning to my inn and eating breakfast, I did two more hours of fingertip push-ups, sit-ups and barbell workouts.
One of Grandfather’s teachings was to always train my body, even if I was a Buffer. If I was ever in a tight spot, I could always fall back on my physical strength.
Talker Skills did not consume magic power as their power resided in the words themselves, but I would still get tired if I used them continuously. Especially when exploring Abysses or dealing with Beasts, I got tired so much easier than usual.
Also, while my skills strengthened my party, they didn’t work on me. In other words, I couldn’t use my skills to help myself recover my stamina. If I got too tired and couldn’t activate my skills during a critical moment or I couldn’t think straight, then I would become a burden to the party.
During explorations, we brought potions that recovered stamina and healed wounds but they weren’t enough. If we brought too many potions, they would get in the way when we were fighting and we would be unable to use them if they broke. That was why I had to keep training to increase my base stamina.
I finished my morning training. The rest of it would be done at night. I took a warm shower to wash off my sweat, then gulped down a potion that I took from the cooler.
「……Disgusting」
It tasted as terrible as ever. It tasted like eating raw fish and apples at the same time.
But I just had to endure it. Taking a potion after training was necessary to hasten the recovery of the muscles. That way, I could continue to train my body without needing to have rest days.
I stayed shirtless to cool off my flushed body as I did my stretches but I began to hear noisy footsteps coming from the corridor outside.
「Noel, bad news!!」
The person who had entered my room without knocking, was my ally Walter.
He looked extremely shaken, with bloodshot eyes, messy hair, sweat all over and his body heaving with every breath. It was as if his world had just ended.
I coughed, then crossed my hands across my chest.
「Big brother, you pervert! I told you to knock before you enter the room!」
「What kind of joke is that!? Don’t say such disgusting things!」
I had made him angry. Even though I was only trying to calm him down…… But it seemed like my Talk Skill: Peer Support had worked. Walter became less stressed and he took a deep breath, looking a lot calmer than before.
「……Anyway, we’ve got a serious problem. Read this」
What Walter handed me was a letter. He had held it in his hand so it was soaked with sweat and wrinkled. I spread it carefully so it wouldn’t tear.
I recognized the handwriting of the person who had written those words. They were by our leader, Lloyd. Well, he did sign it but I wanted to verify the handwriting anyway. It was unmistakably not a forgery. It was an authentic letter written by Lloyd.
The words written over the four pages of the letter were long and rambling, and several parts were unnecessary. But the content itself was fairly simple.
I carefully folded up the letter after I had finished reading.
「Hmm, hmm, I see, I see. In short, Lloyd lost money in bad investments and had a lot of debt. So, in order to repay those debts, he embezzled the 12.8 million Fil of party funds. But I pushed to create the clan, so he fled the imperial capital with Tania before things came to light. Ahaha, that guy is an idiot~」
From start to end, the letter only talked about the circumstances in a roundabout manner. On top of that, the only things that stood out were the defense of his actions and his apologies, but in summary, that was the contents of his letter.
This was the reason for that disconcerting feeling I had back at the celebration. It was a story that was so stupid that I couldn’t even laugh at it. When I did fall over laughing, Walter yelled angrily.
「What’s so funny!? Those two betrayed us!」
「That’s why I’m laughing. No way, that respectable Lloyd made bad investments, embezzled and in the end, ran off in the middle of the night. Hahaha, you laugh too, Walter—」
「As if I could laugh, you idiot!!」
After that spit-spewing yell, Walter crossed his arms as he leaned on the wall.
「……Damn, what can we do, what should we do?」
「By the way, when and where did you get the letter?」
「What? ……Just a while ago. I heard of a good request last night at the bar. I wanted to accept it before others could get to it. So first thing this morning, I went to find Lloyd at his lodgings and the boss of the inn gave it to me……」
「Did the boss of the inn say when Lloyd left his room?」
「Just before 8 pm last night, he said」
The city gates were closed from 8 pm to 5 am. In other words, they probably fled the imperial capital under the cover of night just before the doors closed. As the saying goes, they made a break for it.
「It’s 9:30 am now, so half a day has already passed. Considering the time he left, he shouldn’t have been able to hire a stagecoach and he also won’t have escaped by horse for fear of being tracked. Even walking through the night, they couldn’t have made much distance by foot, right? If we rent some fast horses, we should easily catch them by evening」
「Th, that may be the case, but you don’t know which direction they ran, do you?」
「We can simply ask the gate officials. As long as we know which gate they left by, we’ll also know their destination. That’s because it’s dangerous to leave the roads when traveling at night. After walking for half a day, they should have reached a village and if you take into account the limits of their stamina, I bet they are resting there right now」
It would be a different story if they had hired a fugitive-runner to help them but considering the time it would take for Lloyd to decide to run and then put it into action, that was likely difficult for him.
In the first place, unlike Walter and me, for someone like him who was choosy over who he interacted with, there was no way he was acquainted with any Yakuza that would hear his sudden request.
Hearing my words, Walter cracked his knuckles.
「That’s it! Let’s go find the gate officials right away!」
「Wait, hang on a minute, what are you going to do after that?」
「Huh? Are you an idiot? Didn’t you just tell me how to find them? I’m going to find Lloyd and beat him up! I won’t be satisfied until I do that!」
This guy, he didn’t understand the situation at all, did he?
To be sure, I told him one method of finding Lloyd, but I was just trying to teach him that even if we didn’t rush, there were many options available to us. I had no intention of using that method as it was woefully inadequate.
「Are you going to beat him up, quarrel, then reconcile? Or are you going to forgive Lloyd if he comes to you in tears and apologizes? Are you saying that we'll go back to being a close party like before with that? Haaa… That sounds just like a scenario that a muscle fairy living in a flower garden would come up with. Holding hands and singing songs is not the only job your brain has, you fairy-tale idiot」
「Wha, what did you say!?」
「Are you listening? We’ve got idiots on both sides but those idiots are desperate. If we catch up to them, it’s not going to end simply. If things go badly, let alone quarreling, it'll become a fight to the death, you know?」
Otherwise, they won’t have run away from us.
The 12.8 million that Lloyd embezzled and used was already lost. As things were, the whereabouts of the reward from the Lesser Vampire was suspicious. The individual shares were already distributed but the money that was allocated for party use was all managed by Lloyd.
That meant the total amount was 16.8 million Fil. Walter and my contribution came to 8.4 million Fil, which would be the actual amount stolen from us.
While it was a large sum, it was an amount that excellent Seekers, like Lloyd and Tania, could repay. In spite of that, both of them chose to run.
This was a definite betrayal, a severing of ties.
Seeing that they had abandoned the option of apologizing, they must have had a fitting level of resolve. If we pursued them, they’ll undoubtedly see us, not as allies, but as enemies.
「Walter, can you defeat Lloyd for certain?」
While Walter and Lloyd both had C Rank vanguard Jobs, in a one-on-one, Lloyd was stronger. And the margin was not slim, but rather clear.
「……If I have your buffs, then I’m sure I can win」
What an optimistic opinion. According to my prediction, the two of us had a 60 percent chance of winning against Lloyd. Even when we won, it would be close. We would probably receive heavy damage.
Above all, Lloyd wasn’t alone. He was with Tania, the Healer.
「Then can you fight Tania? Incapacitating the Healer first is the basic rule of anti-person fights」
Walter looked away and didn’t answer. It appeared that he had finally understood the situation.
Tania was the one Walter loved. There was no way he could turn his blade against her. With that weakness, even with my buffs, it was impossible for him to defeat Lloyd.
Even supposing he could harden his heart, rather than the duo of Walter and me, the duo of Lloyd and Tania was stronger. In a two-on-two fight, I predicted our chances of winning at around 20 percent.
The combination of a Swordsman with strong attack abilities and a Healer who could heal during combat was strong because of its simplicity. Unless there was a large difference in ability, a combination of a Warrior and a Talker would probably be unable to win against them.
「In the unlikely event that we succeeded and won, we’re not going to get the money back anyway. As things are, even if we caught them, we’ll get absolutely nothing in return. It would just be a wasted effort. They know that as well, so they probably thought that the chances of us pursuing them are low. That’s why they ran」
「Dammit! Then are we supposed to just take it on the chin?!」
「Take it on the chin? Don’t say idiotic things」
There’s absolutely no way I’m going to take this lying down.
Those two had judged that it was better to making a break for it. They had gauged that we probably wouldn’t go out of our way to pursue them. They should also have seen through the fact that Walter couldn’t hurt Tania.
I couldn’t give a fig about Walter’s pure love, but I couldn’t stomach them looking down on me.
「My motto is: pay back a thousandfold. I’ll make sure that the two of them pay for this」
As I made my proclamation, a knock on the door could be heard.
「Mister Noel~! I’m going to do the laundry so please give me your dirty laundry~!」
The owner of that lisping voice was the poster girl of this Stardrop inn, Mary.
When I opened the door, a short girl wearing a cute, frilly servant outfit was standing there with a basket.
「Wow, wow! As ever, Mister Noel is such a great slender-macho!」
Looking at the red-faced Mary, I remembered that I was still shirtless.
This brat, even though she’s only ten, appears to have a keen interest in male nudity. According to the inn’s boss, it seems that there’s a mountain of drawings depicting her favorite handsome models in her room. What’s more, each drawing didn’t just have one guy in it, they were all showing men in various states of entanglement with one another.
Good grief, to have such a refined hobby even though she’s just a kid.
「Laundry right? I’ll bring it right now so just wait–」
「Ohhh, could it be you were in the middle of something!?」
「Huh?」
With a brilliant shine in her eyes, Mary looked back and forth between Walter and me.
「A half naked prince-type dreamboat, and a muscular big-brother-type beefcake…… There’s no way nothing is happening when two guys like that are behind closed doors……」
「Miss Mary, what are you talking about? Aren’t you here to take the laundry?」
「Haaa~~~! Priceless~~~~~~!!」
Mary, who was having a whirl in her delusions, ignored my question and ran away with a strange, fanatical cry.
「INSPIRATION~~!!!!」
I don’t want to imagine or know what kind of inspiration that was, but at any rate, it seemed like Mary was tripping in a happy dream world.
Sincerely and from the bottom of my heart, I wished that she would stay there forever and never come back.
「W, wh, what is that kid?」
There was probably no one who could answer Walter’s question. So I simply told him the unvarnished truth.
「It’s as you can see, a strange kid」
Anyone noticed that Noel runs faster than the world record pace for a marathon every day? (O_O) Carrying the weight of 3 men too. (ｰ ｰ;)
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